She was doing this because Wat had offered her half a stolen apple the day after she arrived, as if he had riches to spare. Because Alyson tucked her cold hand into Amelia’s sleeve when the hall grew loud. Because Edith packed her water while complaining about it. Because Hob called her mistress with a straight face and watched every door when Thomas forgot to watch himself. Because Walter had begun leaving the accounts where she could reach them, which from Walter was practically a sonnet and possibly a proposal of professional respect.
Because Ashcombe had taken her in when it had every reason not to. Because Thomas had taken her in. Not taken. Chosen. Again and again, in ways that cost him.
He had lied for her. Guarded her. Snarled at boys who stared too long and merchants who asked too much. He had put water at her place each morning and blankets near her pallet and his body between her and danger in the middle of a market square. He had refused Fernhill, ten marks, royal comfort, and a quiet wellborn bride because Belmaine had made the bargain out of her absence.
He had chosen her. And she loved him. Which was inconvenient. Also terrifying.
Amelia folded the scrap of parchment into the smallest square she could manage and slid it into her sleeve.
She needed information. The account rolls first. Ashcombe’s would not tell her what Belmaine had, but they might tell her what he should have. Neighboring lands, rents, customary payments, grazing rights, tithe disputes, market purchases, timber claims. Walter would know half of it and complain through the other half. Hob would know the road. Edith would know the servants. The market would know everything, if one asked the right questions badly enough that people corrected you.
Thomas would hear the wordplanand immediately try to stand between her and it.
Which was sweet and also infuriating, but that was Thomas.
She would tell him when there was something to tell. Something solid. Something too useful for him to crush beneath all that noble panic.
“All right,” she whispered.
Sometimes, if you built plans carefully enough and hid the dangerous pieces until the proper moment, plans saved exactly what everyone else had already decided was doomed.
She turned the linen inventory over and began taking notes on the back.
THOMAS
The harvest-home feast should have come sooner, but Ashcombe had spent the weeks since the last sheaf was brought in paying rents, patching roofs, facing royal clerks, and trying not to be swallowed whole by Sir Roger Belmaine’s smile.
Thomas knew better than to interfere in the harvest-home feast Edith was planning. Edith had looked at him over a bowl of rising dough with flour on her forearms and murder in her eyes, and Thomas, who had faced mailed men with axes at Evesham and not stepped back, discovered an urgent need to be elsewhere.
“The people have earned it,” she said, punching the dough and sending small puffs of flour into the air.
“Three days of joy costs less than a month of sour faces and short tempers. Feed folk well, let them sing, let them remember they are not beasts yoked to the land, and they’ll work the better for it.”
“We haven’t the stores to waste on?—”
“Waste?” Edith’s hand stilled.
That was a poor choice of words, he knew it at once and cringed.
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“Not waste.”
“Good.” She turned the dough with a hard twist.
“We’ve barley enough for pottage, onions enough to sweeten it, peas enough for one decent dish if no fool goes dipping twice, two geese from Widow Maud because the woman is proud as Lucifer and twice as stubborn, three hens past laying, cheese from the dairy, apples from the west orchard, and Friar Huck will bring honey and mead.”
“That sounds rather extravagant given our circumstances.”
“It sounds like harvest-home.”
“Which means my already limited coffers will be bleeding.”
“It sounds,” Edith said, slowly enough to suggest the words were being laid down for a simple child, “like people who have worked through rain, rot, hunger, rumor, fear, and your temper, will be getting one night to remember they’re alive.”
Thomas looked to the entryway, where was Hob when he needed the man?
